"Pandora's Baby" - Book "review"
I finished reading Pandora's" Baby by Robin Marantz Henig.
It was an interesting book into the history of how IVF became a treatment to help infertility patients have children. It's amazing how far science has come in just the 3 decades since the first IVF child was born in 1978. It's amazing how much it took to get to that point. There was a lot of opposition to IVF, and still is, from those claiming REs are playing God or those claiming, at least back in the 70s, that it would lead to deformed children. How lucky it was doctors figured out how to make this work.
Reading the book made me feel lucky that I am living at a time that IVF would be available to me. Otherwise, I would have had to try surgery to unblock my tubes (though my doctors didn't seem confident that would work), and it would have cost a lot more money and caused a lot more pain, I think, at least physically. While reading the book, it did make me think of the other embryos that we had. I had 10 eggs retrieved, but only 7 fertilized. Of those 7, only 2 made it to blastocyst (and eventually into my 2 babies). I sometimes wonder about those other 5 and am sad that they didn't make it. While at the same time, relieved that I don't have that decision to make on what we want to do with any frozen embryos.
The book also talked about health problems that some IVF children have...a lot due to multiple births because they have a higher chance of being born premature. The book said something about US clinics transferring (o.k. she used the word implant which irritates me) more than 2 embryos to boost the chances of the cycle working so their numbers look better. I don't think the clinic I went to will do more than 2 except in certain circumstances.
The book also talked about cloning and the controversy surrounding that being similar to what took place with IVF (though there are differences).
Overall, it was an interesting book even though it did go off on tangents I didn't think were necessary. I have another book from the library about IVF called Embryo Culture that I plan to read at some point.
It was an interesting book into the history of how IVF became a treatment to help infertility patients have children. It's amazing how far science has come in just the 3 decades since the first IVF child was born in 1978. It's amazing how much it took to get to that point. There was a lot of opposition to IVF, and still is, from those claiming REs are playing God or those claiming, at least back in the 70s, that it would lead to deformed children. How lucky it was doctors figured out how to make this work.
Reading the book made me feel lucky that I am living at a time that IVF would be available to me. Otherwise, I would have had to try surgery to unblock my tubes (though my doctors didn't seem confident that would work), and it would have cost a lot more money and caused a lot more pain, I think, at least physically. While reading the book, it did make me think of the other embryos that we had. I had 10 eggs retrieved, but only 7 fertilized. Of those 7, only 2 made it to blastocyst (and eventually into my 2 babies). I sometimes wonder about those other 5 and am sad that they didn't make it. While at the same time, relieved that I don't have that decision to make on what we want to do with any frozen embryos.
The book also talked about health problems that some IVF children have...a lot due to multiple births because they have a higher chance of being born premature. The book said something about US clinics transferring (o.k. she used the word implant which irritates me) more than 2 embryos to boost the chances of the cycle working so their numbers look better. I don't think the clinic I went to will do more than 2 except in certain circumstances.
The book also talked about cloning and the controversy surrounding that being similar to what took place with IVF (though there are differences).
Overall, it was an interesting book even though it did go off on tangents I didn't think were necessary. I have another book from the library about IVF called Embryo Culture that I plan to read at some point.
posted by seattlegal @ 1:51 PM
1 Comments:
At 4:52 PM ,
Caba said...
I am so with you. We had 12 eggs, 8 fertilized, and only 2 made it to blasts. And those two are now sleeping in the nursery. I'm very glad (in retrospect of course) that I didn't have anything to freeze. At the time I was upset because we found out in the 2ww. But I think we are probably done with our family, and it would have been hard to decide what to do with the extras.
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